Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

It may not be the intention but why does section 2 state "or failing to act"? Second, I wonder whether the introduction of differential levels of liability for different health professionals is a good idea and how it would work in practice.

With regard to group practices, is somebody providing a service for payment or reward if he or she is called out to treat an accident victim using the same telephone system or GMS list of the practice? Will a differentiation be made between them and members of other group practices or sole general practitioners in an area who come on the scene of an accident? These are legitimate concerns.

The Cabinet earlier considered the legislation. It is not worthy of support in its present form but the issue of voluntarism is worthy of study. The legislation deals only with first aid in limited circumstances where it must be administered at the scene of an accident or emergency. That is another unintended limitation of the Bill. The Cabinet decided to ask the Law Reform Commission to examine this issue in a broader sense and deal with the questions of differential liability among health professionals, whether we should, in any circumstance, make actionable a failure to intervene, whether the scope of legislation in this regard should be confined to first aid cases or should be underpinned by broad principles and whether cases where people who engage in voluntary activities for the good of their communities should be covered. If this law was introduced and failure to act became actionable, is a person who finds somebody on a cliff ledge covered? If the person is not ill or unconscious and is not in receipt of emergency first aid and a rope is fed down to him or her, the Bill is of no use because its scope is so narrow. If one began to pull up the rope and toppled down on top of the person, injuring him or her due to one's negligence, the Bill would not apply. This Bill does not even deal with somebody who jumps into a river or takes out a boat to save somebody from drowning, something which has nothing to do with first aid.

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